The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

THE BOOK OF TELLS to

THE BOOK OF TELLS to identify how they feel; those who are relaxed about status distinctions don't usually produce any submissive tells at all, whereas those who feel that they are intruding on an important person are likely to reveal their discomfort by dipping their head very slightly. • HEAD-NOD TELLS. Repetitive nodding is also an integral part of conversation. You often see people who are in the listener role nodding slowly while the other person is speaking. They do this both to show that they are listening and to demonstrate that they don't want to take over the speaker's role. Fast nodding also shows that the listener understands the speaker, but because it contains a sense of urgency, it shows either that the listener supports the speaker wholeheartedly or that the listener wants to take over the speaker's role. So while slow nodding sends the message, 'I understand what you're saying and I want to continue listening', fast nodding sends one of two messages - either 'I totally agree with you' or 'I understand you, but hurry up, I want to say something now!' The distinction between these last two messages usually depends on where the listener is looking - at the speaker when he or she is being supportive, and away from the listener when he or she wants the floor. • HEAD-CANT TELLS. As we've seen, submissive people frequently lower their head or cant it to one side. Headcanting serves as an appeasement display because it exposes the neck, which is a vulnerable part of the body, and because it makes the person look shorter and therefore less threatening. It also makes the person look 82

SUBMISSIVE TELLS helpless, rather like a baby with its head to one side. It's very likely, in fact, that head canting owes its origins to the innocent feelings of helplessness that we experienced as a baby, tilting our head to one side and resting it on our parent's shoulder. We also find remnants of these early experiences in the shrug, which is often performed with the head tilted to one side. Head-canting tends to be used by people who want to appear submissive or sexually attractive, or both. There are several reports suggesting that women use head-canting more than men, but this has not been consistently supported by research. 6 A research project in Italy, conducted by Marco Costa, Marzia Menzani and Pio Ricci Bitti, looked at examples of head-canting in paintings from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. 7 It was discovered that commissioned portraits of powerful men seldom include head-canting, but that depictions of religious or pious figures frequently do. In this study the researchers also found that headcanting is more pronounced among female figures than among male figures. Whether this is a case of art mimicking life remains to be seen. Eye Tells For territorial and solitary species, flight is the natural solution to a conflict where it looks as if one's going to lose. For these species it's better to run away and live to fight another day than to risk being injured. In a social species like ours, flight isn't really an option because our lives are based on co-operation. This means that we can't simply run away when there's a confrontation - we need 83